BlackBerry announces winner of Nordic app developer contest

Innovative tourism app ‘Enjoy Sweden’ is awarded top honour at the BlackBerry Challenge finals in Malmö

Research In Motion (RIM), the BlackBerry® manufacturer, announced the winner (photo) of its BlackBerry Challenge yesterday, a mobile application developer competition held at leading Nordic media convention The Conference in Malmö.

The competition, which opened in May, saw five teams selected to compete live throughout the two-day conference, before submitting their final mobile apps. The app submissions, created for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet and/or BlackBerry® smartphones, were then judged by a panel of experts from RIM and the convention organizers, Media Evolution.

The winner, an interactive tourism app called ‘Enjoy Sweden’, was awarded the top prize based on multiple criteria. The app helps tourists with BlackBerry devices to discover Sweden in a new and intuitive way, wherever they are. It features a combination of user-generated and editorial content – videos, pictures and text – providing tips and information to tourists visiting Sweden. The app has two user modes: Couch Mode is for users planning a trip and lets them search for and save content from the app. Map Mode is used while in Sweden and uses location-based services, enabling users to discover featured restaurants, hotels, places and other landmarks nearby. Additionally, the app has a “favorite spots” feature which makes it possible for users to tag their favorite locations with their own content such as videos or pictures and share with other users. It also integrates social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Designed and created by a Malmö-based start-up, ‘Enjoy Sweden’ will soon be made available on BlackBerry® App World™, which has over 35,000 downloads per day and is available to over 67 million BlackBerry customers globally. As well as winning their own BlackBerry PlayBooks, ‘Enjoy Sweden’ will benefit from marketing and technical support from RIM and The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), which was acquired by RIM last year.

Paul Lucier, Managing Director for Northern Europe and Russia at RIM, announced the winning team. He says: “The Nordics is a hub for talented developers and RIM and TAT is excited to be part of that community. We saw an outstanding level of quality produced by all the participants and welcome them to our community, joining over 400,000 BlackBerry developers around the world. We congratulate Enjoy Sweden for their winning submission and look forward to supporting them and others to create apps for BlackBerry in the Nordics.”

Albin Ponnert, the founder of Enjoy Sweden added: “There is so much work behind this app and we’re all very touched by this prize. Developing for the BlackBerry platform has been a great deal of fun and has created a great opportunity for us. We look forward to continuing our work on this open and powerful BlackBerry platform which is highly suitable for the next-generation of apps being produced.”

The panel of judges included experts from RIM, Media Evolution, Idélaboratoriet and Kaospiloterna, and the blogger Johanna Nylander.

BlackBerry PlayBook The BlackBerry® PlayBook™ is an ultra-portable (425 grams) tablet enabling true multitasking based on multi-threaded QNX operating systems. The PlayBook features two HD video cameras, full HDMI support, and uncompromised web browsing with full support for Adobe Flash and HTML 5. Further information available at http://us.blackberry.com/playbook-tablet/

BlackBerry 7 Earlier this month, RIM announced a number of new smartphone models based on the new BlackBerry® 7 OS. The BlackBerry 7 browser is the fastest and most powerful BlackBerry browser ever made, 40% faster than previous BlackBerry browsers. The new operating system enables new experiences, such as augmented reality and NFC-based features. Additionally, the BlackBerry 7 OS platform offers gold standard in web standards with best in class HMTL5 support and JavaScript performance. Further information available at http://www.rim.com/products/blackberry_os7.shtml

BBM 6In July, RIM launched BlackBerry® Messenger™ 6 (BBM 6) enabling a new social app experience in which users can enjoy games, multimedia, books and more with their BBM friends. BBM 6 provides several benefits to developers, providing opportunities to design socially interactive apps and to tap into the viral nature of BBM and social nature of BlackBerry users to spread the word about their app organically. Further information available at http://www.rim.com/products/blackberrymessenger.shtml